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FAQs - About ESPO

ESPO is one of the UK's largest Professional Buying Organisations (PBO). It's a customer focused organisation owned by the public sector. We're committed to delivering best value to our customers, suppliers and local communities, including:

Local authorities e.g. town, city, district, borough or county councils

Central government agencies and ministries

The NHS and health trusts (including HSC in Northern Ireland)

Emergency services (blue light services)

The education sector (schools, academies, colleges and universities)

Registered charities

Registered social landlords and housing associations

ESPO was established in 1981 to provide a comprehensive procurement service to its member authorities. We now operate from a state-of-the-art 120,000 sq ft distribution facility where more than 350 staff are dedicated to providing customers with a rapid and efficient service. Our philosophy throughout this time has been to deliver cost savings to customers by offering more choice, quality and best value.

ESPO is owned by the public sector through seven local authorities and is self funding, any profit made from our trading or procurement activities covers our running costs and allows us to invest in procurement services that all aspects of the public sector can benefit from. Any income made over and above this is returned back the public sector via our members.

We recover our costs in a number of ways:

A retrospective rebate payable from our suppliers, in proportion to the framework usage. The aggregated demand of all our customers, and the high use of our frameworks, enables the rebate to be set at a very low level, averaging less than 0.5% of the total spend through frameworks. You will not be charged any additional membership, subscription or other fees for accessing or using our frameworks.

Requirements for client specific procurement will be discussed with you and a fee would be payable by the customer based upon our estimates of the cost involved in undertaking the procurement. This is a transparent process and the fee would be agreed with you in advance. The combination of our existing level of expertise, together with our not-for-profit status, results in us being able to offer a highly competitive service.